Can someone highlight the differences between a symbolic link and a shortcut?
– tomjedrzMay 12 '09 at 2:46

1

@tomjedrz: if you are using shortcut, any APIs to open that shortcut will open a text file that contains the path to the target file/folder. if you are using links, any APIs to open that link will open the target file/folder.
– Afriza N. AriefFeb 17 '12 at 3:55

Symbolic links via mklink are available since Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 you can use

fsutil hardlink create <destination filename> <source filename>

According to msdn.microsoft, Symbolic Links are NOT supported on FAT16/32 and exFAT. It seems Windows only supports them from or to NTFS-Partitions. Future Windows operating systems are likely to continue support for mklink.

NTFS has been supporting links (with various names) since Windows 2000, but they were only used internally, most notably in the SYSVOL domain shares; some utilities were available for managing them, but were not built-in; Vista introduced the MKLINK tool and the extensive usage of links on default Windows installations.
– MassimoMay 9 '11 at 14:13

2

Would be nice to mention fsutil from @sascha's answer below to provide a solution for Windows Server 2003.
– PhrogzJul 19 '11 at 22:13

Good answer. I'm on WinXP / Win2003 and needed mklink, but this solved my issue for me. I usually use junction.exe from sysinternals, but that only handles directories and in this case I needed a file link
– s3v1Mar 16 '11 at 10:37

A pity a symbolic link cannot be created by fsutil, at least from what I've read elsewhere. This is a hard link and thus not an answer to the question.
– VlasecMay 5 '15 at 12:01

Didn't see this in any of the answers, but linkd.exe (in the Windows 2003 Resource kit here) allows you to create junctions, which pretty much function as a soft/hard link does in Linux. Junctions are available from Windows 2000 and up, so just copy linkd.exe to the target system and it should work.

This worked great for me on Windows 2003 for creating a symbolic link to a folder on another drive. Thanks!
– PhilNov 13 '11 at 18:54

Comment from anonymous user, originally edited into the answer: "Note: For XP to work, it has to be using an NTFS partition, not FAT or FAT32. See aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php for steps on how to convert to NTFS."
– squillmanAug 17 '12 at 19:32

To make sure your links work you might want to check the configuration of your server.
Links can be made but unless you use the symlinkevaluation setting in the following command your links might not work.